Mind Game
by her-eyes-fiery-pinpricks
Summary: Finn looks on from the front row, middle seat, in the house. Finn's words echo off the empty walls, the large, red space ominously cold. Finn's kind of creeped out. Willa feels at home. Finn doesn't know how a place can form a bond like that to a person, but it's probably something beyond his left-brain. One-shot, K-plus to be safe, Real life Filla friendship.


**More cute Filla. Yaaaay.**

**More of a friendship, I guess. And it's not AU. Real life. Or their real life.**

**I mulled on this every Wednesday during dance class as I going across the floor. Well, that, and my Nutcracker rewrite.**

**Listening to H2$ original Broadway soundtrack. Ah, summer of 2011. I would reread 4 over and over and over again while replaying "Cinderella Darling". It's still the most played on my iPod. Memories.**

**ATTENTION: Please check out my forum, all of you that haven't! It's called The Talk of the Kingdom. We're gonnna talk about KK. Yeah.**  
**DISCLAIMER: I don't know if there's a community theater in Orlando. The beauty of fanfiction!**

**Mind Game**

"So this," she says, running across the stage and extending her legs in a perfect line, "is a leap. _Grand jete_, to be exact."

"Okay. Cool. Looks easy."

"Yeah, right. See how I did a split? That's the tough part. It's not that easy to get your legs into a straight line like that."

"Okay, whatever."

Finn still thinks it's all doable._ I mean, how hard is it to do a jump? _You get into the air, you stay there. Easy enough.

But Willa thinks otherwise. One night patrolling the Castle she had started talking about how her ankle was killing her because she did an inside _pique en pointe_ when she was supposed to do an outside. Finn had gotten tired of her complaining and Willa's response was "Oh really? I'll show you a thing or two about ballet."

So he's stuck inside Orlando Community Theater, which doors were usually open to the public, until he admits to Willa that dance is hard. So basically, he'll be there till he dies.

"This is a _battement_." Willa, with pointed toes, kicks consecutively, as if a puppet string is lifting her leg. Finn wonders how jerk of her foot can look graceful.

"What's with all the French?" he asks.

"Ever heard of French Ballet?"

She suddenly stops. "Eesh…my ankle still is hurting…" Willa grimaces and plops down on the stage, massaging her foot. She sits in a butterfly stretch. Finn looks on from the front row, middle seat, in the house. Finn's words echo off the empty walls, the large, red space ominously cold. Finn's kind of creeped out. Willa feels at home. Finn doesn't know how a place can form a bond like that to a person, but it's probably something beyond his left-brain.

"Are you always on your tip toes like that?" he says, pointing at the worn, frayed, once-pink-but-now-gray pointe shoes on Willa's feet.

"No. I couldn't possibly."

"So what, is that for advanced?"

"Yeah. You forget, I'm holding all my weight on my toes."

"But doesn't every human being do that?"

"Their feet. Not their toes."

"Oh." Finn's defeated. One Willa, negative 18 Finn.

"Here's a little secret," Willa says, after a long silence. "I have trouble with_ pirouettes_."

"That would be great to know if I knew what a pirouette was."

"When I spin. Like this." Willa grounds herself on two feet which are planted on the stage. She lifts up on own toes and turns around herself once.

"That looks okay to me," he says.

"Yeah, that's a single. I still can't seem…" she gets in the same starting position and spins, this time, one and a half rotations. She falls out of the spin halfway through her second. "To do a double."

"I see. But it still looks good." Finn says.

"No it doesn't. Not for a member of the Advanced Senior Company, it doesn't."

"Well, I bet not very many people can do a double."

Willa gives him a look. Finn shrugs his shoulders. _Well, excuse me, I'm not a dance major._

"But," she says, taking a swig of her water bottle, "dance is a mind game."

"A mind game?"

"See, half the problem is your mind set. If I wanna get across the stage with an _assemble_, I can. But I gotta think it. I need to think _up_, not _across." _She displays. From the left side of the stage, she gallops to the middle and extends out one leg and puts in front of the other. She's right, she's on the other side.

"Okay. So I could just think to myself 'I want ballet' and then do it?"

"No," she eyes Finn. "You need technique. But honestly, that's it. Just trust it."

She gazes at theater surrounding her, breathing in the ghost music that floats silently in the air. "There's a point when you say 'I don't care.' You go out there…and do it."

She goes to that starting position, and double _pirouettes_ flawlessly.

Finn claps. She beams.

Willa smirks. "I would make you stay longer, but I think you've had your lesson today."

_"Yes!"_ he exclaims, making Willa laugh. "I mean, I love watching you dance. You're great. But dance is not my thing. She smiles as she unties the ribbons on her pointe shoes. "So I can say dance is easy?"

"Shut up," she says, tugging the bag on her shoulder and hopping down the steps and joining Finn in the front of the house. Finn links elbows with her.

"So I can apply that thinking to fighting the OTs? Like, the 'I don't care' thing, and immediately take them down?"

She opens the door to the outside. Light leaks in and illuminates her smile. "Shut up."

**Review? Concrit is accepted and appreciated. :)**

**I hope I explained all the ballet terms right...I did them every week, you know...**


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